On his 200th appearance, Harlequins' favourite son, Ugo Monye, scored a brilliant solo try to bring up the bonus point that all but guarantees Quins a home quarter-final in the Heineken Cup. You should have heard the roar. It was just about the perfect day if you were a Quins fan.

To be denied a home quarter-final now, they would need to flop in Biarritz and Leicester would need to beat the Ospreys and Toulouse, both with a bonus point, and in the process score 17 more tries than Quins manage in the Basque country next weekend. It's not going to happen. Win in Biarritz, however, and Harlequins will qualify as No1 seeds. No doubt, it will be cathartic. The last such quarter-final here was the notorious game against Leinster that will be forever known as Bloodgate.

Not that this was an entirely wholesome affair. At one point in the first half, the Connacht props spent a good 30 seconds or so fighting in a heap on the ground with the Harlequins front row. Happily, the referee let that go – boys will be boys – but in the second half he had had enough. Connacht went down to 12 men for 30 seconds, as four yellow cards were brandished, three for the visitors. Fortunately, the game was long gone in Quins' favour, so, rather than spoil things, it added to the pantomime atmosphere on a bitterly cold afternoon. And a fine atmosphere it was, too, with the mournful strains of Fields of Athenry mingling with The Might Quinn. The Stoop is a fine place to visit these days. Even the Irish may agree. Take note, Saracens.

On the field, it was visibly less jolly, the fisticuffs a symptom of the contest's intensity. Connacht were not here to make things easy for the home team. Not for the first time lately, Quins were forced to resort to the more muscular arts to break open the game. They had been full of running, as usual, which was understandable in these temperatures, but Connacht were stroppy and obstructive across the field. And, actually, they made the cleaner breaks in the first half – Tiernan O'Halloran, in particular, unafraid of the bitterly cold open spaces.

So Quins took to the corner and the comfort of each other's warmth. They drove one lineout over the line and, from the subsequent attacking scrums, they won a penalty try at the second attempt, six minutes before the break. Nick Evans's penalty on the stroke of half-time opened up a 16-3 lead.

It was quickly back to the running, though. Mike Brown weaved his way through two or three to put Tom Williams into the corner barely a minute after the resumption. That was when the yellow-card fun began, Johnny O'Connor seeing the first for obstruction, followed by Fetu'u Vainikolo for the same. While Connacht were down to 13, Quins scored their third try. It was Williams again, this time running a simple score into the corner straight from a lineout.

At 28-3, the game was long won but Joe Marler could not help himself. For what is reckoned to have been the fifth time in the match, he got involved in a punch-up. Monye pulled him away and remonstrated with angelic reason but it was yellow for Marler and his fellow brawler, Ethienne Reynecke. It meant that, for 30 seconds, Connacht were down to 12, with Quins down to 14. When they were back to 14, Connacht scored their one try, O'Connor, back from the bin, peeling off a lineout and drive.

The respite was brief. Monye claimed that bonus-point try two minutes later, beating three players for the game's most popular try in the 65th minute. Two further scores in the last two minutes were the final insult for Connacht, who, like Zebre a few weeks ago, had held Quins off for half an hour before capitulating. Still, unlike with Zebre, there are plenty of big teams in Europe who have more than struggled against this Connacht outfit. By that reckoning, few will fancy a trip to the Stoop in April.